Ideas for Family Traditions

[TheWife]

Feel free to add more ideas!

Family Traditions for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and The New Year

Dinner Time - Take a white tablecloth, have all holiday dinner guests sign and date it. Later, embroider over the signatures to make them permanent, add on more signatures each time you have a holiday meal at your house. While dinner is being prepared, have grandparents take the kids for a walk, have them tell stories from their past. Have your Thanksgiving meal early in the day, or your Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, so that you can spend dinner time as a family, volunteering at a soup kitchen or shelter. Have a family fast and prayer the day before Thanksgiving, take the time to really reflect on what you are thankful for and have been blessed with. Pass around a card to sign, send to family that could not be present, (kids on missions, in the military, away on business.) Save the wishbone from the turkey, let it dry, and at Christmas dinner the oldest and youngest family member hold one end each and break it in half while making a wish. The person with the bigger piece will have their wish come true.

Outings - Make a big bowl of popcorn, get some Christmas music, and drive around looking at lights while having the popcorn and singing along. Visit Temple Square to see the lights and go to the visitor’s center, bring non-member friends with you. Go ice skating together, attend a Christmas play, or go to a holiday movie. Go caroling, go for a sleigh ride, find a wintery spot for a family photo shoot.

Trees/Ornaments - Choose your tree as a family, whether it’s cutting one down or getting one from a tree lot. Slice off an inch thick ring of wood from the trunk each year, mark the year on it and use it for ornaments in the years to come. Turn out all the lights in the house except the tree, sit silently in front of the tree, reflecting on the year and your life. Buy a fake tree this year, in the following years use the money you would have spent to buy a tree for a family who can’t afford one. Get a velvet bag to hang on the tree as an ornament, have each family member write down a memory to place in the bag. Have an ornament exchange with extended family members. Leave the tree up till New Years, but take the decorations off, have family members write poems or letters to each other every day, roll them up, place them in the tree. By New Years you will have a collection of poems and notes to read to each other.

Charity/Service - Choose someone on the Angel tree, leave donations for Toys for Tots or the Salvation Army, sponsor a family in need. Have your kids choose toys from the dollar store and take them to children that are in long term care at the hospital. Have the kids go through their toys and clothes, take unused items to a charity. Visit people who are alone, who don’t have any family to be around. Take gifts/goodies to service workers such as police who have to work the holidays. Help elderly people with their holiday decorations. Declare the 25th of every month a day for your family to do something for someone else, there is no reason to only be generous and charitable in December. Each time a family member does a good deed, they tie a red, gold, or white ribbon on the tree.

Just for fun - After the kids are in bed, but not asleep, have an adult go outside and shake bells by their window, letting the little ones think it’s the reindeer on their way. Sign everything in December in green or red ink, let the kids sprinkle the yard with "reindeer food" (glitter and oatmeal), wear a Santa hat every where you go, decorate your car or kids bedrooms with decorations, pass out candy canes to everyone. Give all the kids new pajamas, build a fire, snuggle the whole family under one huge blanket, each person can have their own personalized pillow to lay on, tell stories and share memories from the year. Have a snowball fight, make a snowman family, go sledding. Make Christmas cards and wrapping paper together. Make treats for neighbors, gingerbread houses, your own ornaments. Have an advent calendar to count down the days till Christmas.

Learning - Read about the history of Thanksgiving so your children know why we celebrate this day. Teach your children about the symbolic things we see at Christmas time, find the origins and tell the stories of how they came to be part of the holiday, (such as mistletoe, poinsettias, holly, bells, tinsel, etc.) Learn about a tradition from another country or culture and adopt it in to your family. Teach your children the importance of recognizing other cultures and respecting that not all people celebrate the same.

Religious - Read about Jesus’s birth instead of the "Night Before Christmas". Get a miniature stocking, put "Jesus" on it, have family members write down a gift they will give to Jesus this year, such as being kinder to others, leave the "gifts" in the stocking to read next year and see how well they each did with
the gift they offered. Celebrate Jesus’s birthday on Christmas morning, sing Happy Birthday, give each family member a cupcake with a candle, so they can each make their own wish for Jesus. When putting up your nativity scene, leave the manger empty, every time your children do something nice, let them put a piece of straw in the manger. Enough nice deeds will make a nice soft bed for Jesus, who will be put in the manger Christmas morning.

Saving Memories - Start a "Blessings Book", Holiday Scrapbook, or Holiday Journal, each person writes down what makes them feel blessed, let the kids take pictures during family activities and dinners, have everyone write a paragraph about their memories from the year, their favorite food from the dinner, and their wishes for the next year, leave blank pages for the years to come. Take a family photo while at Thanksgiving dinner, make copies of it and have it framed to give at Christmas. Or do a family picture of everyone in their pj’s, or take an annual picture with Santa at the mall. Make a New Years Time Capsule. Add stories, pictures, memorabilia (such as things from school, newspaper articles about your kids, play bills from plays you saw as a family, movie stubs, etc.).

Giving and Receiving - Do something for the 12 days of Christmas, write poems or kind letters, do acts of service, or give small little gifts each day leading up to Christmas. Do it for your spouse or your children, or someone in need. Give your children only three gifts each, to represent the three gifts that were given to Jesus, (the reason the tradition of giving was started in the first place.) This will cut down your cost, prevent you from buying a bunch of little things to make it look like they got more, and lets the children know exactly what to expect so they don’t have that inevitable look of disappointment, hoping there is just one more thing for them. Give them only one gift from Santa as well. Have your children write and send thank you cards for the gifts they received, including Santa and to Jesus (which you can keep for them). Give calendars as gifts to family members, with pictures from the whole previous year.

For the New Year - Have an annual recap of the year on New Year’s Eve, take turns with each family member, show your favorite pictures and memories from the past year. Have family members write down predictions for the next year, guess if someone will get married, have a baby, if the family will move, get a new car, etc., seal the predictions in an envelope for the next New Year’s Day. Make a sincere list of resolutions, review it monthly, give a genuine effort to stick to them, help each other accomplish these goals. Help your kids let go of grudges or issues from the past year. Write down what is bothering them on a rock, piece of paper, etc. and then together as a family, throw it all away or burn it, so you all have a fresh start for the New Year.

Do not do any last minute shopping! Don’t shop, don’t get groceries, don’t go out to eat, don’t get gas. If no one went shopping on the holidays, the stores would be able to close, letting their workers be home with their families. As long as people continue to shop at the last minute, stores will continue to stay open later and later each year, keeping employees from their loved ones.

[Kimberly]

Some great ideas!!!

[christykay]

Thank you for all of the wonderful ideas! I will now be adding some new traditions to our home this year!